Diversity of <em>Sordariales </em>Fungi: Identification of Seven New Species of Naviculisporaceae Through Morphological Analyses and Genome Sequencing

Thanks to the Next Generation Sequencing technologies, the diversity of Fungi can now be investigated through the analysis of their genome sequences. Naviculisporaceae is a family within the Sordariales, whose diversity is not well known, with only one genome sequence published for this family. Here, we report the isolation and cultivation of 20 new strains of Naviculisporaceae. Their genome sequences, as well as those of five commercially available strains, were determined, thus providing complete genome sequences for 25 new Naviculisporaceae strains. Species delimitation was conducted using a combination of (1) ITS + LSU phylogenetic analysis of the new isolates along with other known species of the family, (2) comparisons between DNA barcode sequences of the new strains with those of known species, and (3) average genome-wide nucleotide identity calculation. We built a phylogenomic tree and studied the organization of the mating-type locus. In vitro fruiting was obtained for 16 strains, enabling the definition of seven new species: Pseudorhypophila gallica, Pseudorhypophila guyanensis Rhypophila alpibus, Rhypophila brasiliensis, Rhypophila camarguensis, Rhypophila reunionensis and Rhypophila thailandica, as well as two new com-binations: Pseudorhypophila latipes and Pseudorhypophila oryzae. Eight strains for which in-vitro fruiting was not obtained may belong to additional new species. These results ex-pand the known diversity of the Naviculisporaceae and greatly enlarge the genomic data available for the family.